Here are some tips for attending ISTE conference in the future. Learned from experience. LOL.
- Make sure to check out session before hand online. Some sessions need pre-registration and/or tickets. Registering for these tickets are important.
- Realize that there are so many things to do, see, learn, talk about, and share, that you can't do everything.
- Try to see the student showcases. Students are eager to share their projects, answer questions and make connections.
- Don't be afraid to share ideas and ask questions during sessions. Bonus: sometimes you can get free things for just sharing.
- Take some time to enjoy the local atmosphere: stores, historical areas, main street, food, etc.
- Business cards are sort of "old". Try creating digital contact cards like using QR codes.
- Try to attend the free Unplugged session. It was called SocialEdCon this year. It's usually two days before the official start. Great way for you to informally meet others in ed tech, discuss solutions and network. How it works is that anyone can start a poster board with a topic/questions that you'd like to discuss as a group. Then you go around marking the ones that you feel are important. Then the coordinator makes a quick schedule of all the topics. Then you just got to the group discussion. You can roam around to topics you feel are worth your time. Had some great ideas and discussions.
- Try to do reflections or ideas the same day as the information gained each day is overwhelming. Debreifing after while relaxing and taking notes of your ideas maintains the quality of your reflections. Then you won't forget.
- Try to coordinate before hand sessions with other attendees from your school. You can see what they are going to and figure out if you have same sessions. Sometimes you can get more sessions and information if you split up and go to different ones. You can cover more sessions.
- Having a wiki or a collaborative noting site, like how we did at this conference, was very helpful. I am able to see what sessions others are attending, the information and ideas they gained and the resources are shared easily and quickly. Plus others who are not attending can read as the conference goes on.